of our affection for lighthouses, how we might seem tame and yet are feral

creatures, at home amongst kelp, barnacles, flying fish, salt.

to blue cod with mashed kumara and fresh crushed ginger will be immediate

and long-lasting.

CB - 2007

*

Janet Frame was born in Dunedin on 28 August 1924; Jeanette Winterson in Manchester on 27 August 1959. We share a birthday week. In 2007, Upfront - a Dunedin-based women's poetry collective - arranged a poetry event to celebrate what would have been Janet's 83rd birthday. Taking liberties on birthdays is one of the poems I read that evening.

Tuesday 28 August 2007 also happened to be the date of a total lunar eclipse whose every phase was visible to us here in New Zealand. Total eclipses of the moon are remarkable, slow-moving spectacles; the deep, three-dimensional reality of our universe comes alive in a graceful celestial ballet as the moon swings unhurriedly through Earth's shadow.

Jeanette Winterson in front of her Spitalfield's Market shop, London

University Book Shop's display of Janet Frame's latest collection Gorse Is Not People

Over on the TP hub this week, our editor is Australian poet P. S. Cottier with Piecemeal by Sarah Rice, described by Penelope as ". . . one of the most intellectually energetic people I have met. Stand by her and the ideas swarm out like bees, but multi-coloured bees without stings. . . "

Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.

Shake it gently.

Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.

Copy conscientiously.

The poem will be like you.

And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.

Tristan Tzara - 1920

Okay Tristan, here goes. . .

Yesterday’s wind
featured the same face

like the good feathers for all starlings

their waterfront not wrong coming.

Birds learn where
they sit

facing the
wind in the column

resting not which way from it.

All the exceptions live there.

No bird of Harwood could reason like Lynne.

Blow on the way so they can tell

when from which. Live always as a lot, says Nelson.

CB2012

*

MarsscienceroverCuriosityperformedadaredevildescentthroughpinkMartianskieslateonSundaytoclinch
an historiclandinginside an ancientcrater,
readytosearchforsignstheRedPlanetmayoncehaveharboredkeyingredientsforlife.

R

over may pink late on search for ancient Sunday skies. Key ingredients to clinch daredevil science. Have ready Curiosity through descent a landing inside the life to signs harbored on Martian Planet. Mars once performed Red for an historic crater.CB 2102

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.

After a mix-up re; this week's posting TP curator Mary McCallum came up with a cracker --- Wellington poet Bill Manhire reading his poem Hotel Emergencies

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

NOT AN ELEPHANT* There's a hippopotamus in the room
more awkward than an elephant.
It scans the perimeters, paws the carpet;
the eyes narrow, threaten. Conversation
in low-backed cushioned chairs
slides sideways, stumbles
hides those nutrients delectable to the beast.
Disappointed, the quadruped moves on.
The room relaxes; a giraffe appears
lithe, with liquid eyes.
There is laughter; drinks are served;
focus becomes oblique.
Watered well, talk is careless
doesn't notice the grass grow higher
a crocodile
climb out of the river. Martha Morseth

* Not an Elephant was first published in The Listener in March 2012

Hippopotamus in the room (love the title!) was published by Steele Roberts Ltd and is Martha Morseth's second collection of poems. Martha and I have been in the same writing group in Dunedin for about a decade and a half and I was really sorry to be away from home at the time she launched her Hippopotamus. I am neither a funny nor witty nor wry person - attributes Martha has in abundance. She has a way of approaching serious, uncomfortable subjects from a wholly original vantage point, combining clarity and insight with acerbic humour and compassion. She can be sharp-tongued without showing the faintest hint of malice or unkindness.

Martha was born in the United States and immigrated to Dunedin in 1972. She taught high school English until 1999. Her poems and stories have been published in literary and popular magazines and anthologies. The first collection of her poems, Staying Inside the Lines, was released in 2002. Together with four other poets - Kay Mackenzie-Cooke, Jenny Powell, Sue Woottonand Claire Beynon- Martha founded the Dunedin open mic series, Upfront---spotlighting women poets. She has written three books for teenagers, published by Pearson: two short story collections --- Yeah! and EDGE/a cut of unreal; and a book of one-act plays --- Let’s Hear it for the Winner! Three of her one-act plays were produced for Otago University’s 2003 Gay Pride week, and a full-length play, The Trials and Tribulations of Emily, based on New Zealand’s first woman doctor, was produced in 2007. Two of her stories have been on Radio New Zealand.

Trevor Reeves wrote of Martha's first collection Staying Inside the Lines --- "Martha is at her best when juxtaposing things with one another; events, tastes, activities, smells - a potpourri of words and images that are refreshing and delightful, yet bristling with the occasional menace. . . "and of Hippopotamus in the room, Elizabeth Smither has this to say --- ". . . Parallel worlds, one cool and one wild. I love the way you toggle between silence and sound/conversation and doubt/plainness and density/control and sudden rushes of action and feeling. . . "

*

August is NZ poet Janet Frame's birthday month.Gorse is Not People(Penguin) will be launched in Dunedin this coming Wednesday, 15 August from 6.00PM in the University Book Shop. "This brand new collection of 28 short stories by Janet Frame spans the length of her career and contains some of the best she wrote. None of these stories has been published in a collection before and more than half are being published for the first time."RSVP - ubs@unibooks.co.nz

Martha's poem Remembering Janet Frame concludes with what I think might be my favourite stand-alone line in Hippopotamus in the room. It says as much about Martha as it does about Janet.

REMEMBERING JANET FRAME

28 August 2007

I haven't far to walk to imagine you still living on Evans Street passing near Frame Street on your way to the Botanical Garden for the Sunday afternoon brass band concert, then wandering to the aviary to talk to the kea the one you wrote about the one that learned to walk upside down. The tui in my garden are not so clever but manage to stand on their heads when they siphon nectar from the kowhai blossoms. There's a lunar eclipse tonight, on your birthday. How like you to unsettle us all so quietly. Martha Morseth

Friday, August 10, 2012

As I wrote to dear friends Melissa and Marylinn this morning - this is difficult material. I would, however, like to share the work I've been immersed in recently. It is 67 years since the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - events too terrible to fathom and too terrible not to revisit. . . To quote the plea of survivors - Never again.

Yesterday I came across an excellent article that thoughtfully rephrases our common perspective. . .

"Throughout the world, Hiroshima symbolizes the horror of its destruction more than the heroism that enabled its rebirth. But both the horror and the heroism convey messages of hope: the horror, because of the restraint it has imposed on governments, and the heroism, because of what Hiroshima has made of itself today.

There is still in all our minds, of course, the memory of the rubble-strewn surface of the earth as it was in mid-August 1945. I recall vividly the little springs of water bubbling out of the ground, all that remained of the homes that once stood there. But for me the stronger image now is the courage I encountered in the midst of despair, the willingness to think of a distant future that would be brighter and richer than the militarist past. It is this second memory that suggests the stronger theme as we enter the 21st century: the emergence of Hiroshima as an authoritative voice in a discourse exploring new conceptions of human possibilities in a world beyond the Cold War and its bristling military alliances.

What are to be the wellsprings of that discourse? First, that the citizens of Hiroshima need not be seen as merely victims or a static part of history. Second, that the nature of war itself is changing, and therefore the structure of the peace that avoids it must also change. Third, that new actors have joined states and alliances as principal players. And finally, that a new understanding of peace needs to draw on observation of trends toward war and proposals of ways to address them. . . "

The University of Otago's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies is hosting two Hibukashas (pronounced He-BAK-sha) - survivors from Hiroshima. Michimasa Hirata and Shigeko Niimoto Sasamori will be in Dunedin today and tomorrow. Prof. Kevin Clements has created two commemorative events in their honour. For those of you who live in Dunedin, please support either or both of these gatherings? Here is a flier with details re; times and places. . .

An exhibition has been arranged to accompany the lecture and comprises reproductions of nine artworks made by survivors, three pieces of mine and a sculptural work by Stephen Mulqueen. Stephen's long-term studio practice has included the transformation of bullet cases into peace poppies. For the purposes of this anniversary he has mounted a number of these in the shape of the symbol on the flag representing the Hiroshima prefecture. (I will post photographs of his work tomorrow - he'll be hanging it this morning.)

The paintings done by survivors are heart-breaking. . .

Carrying Her Dead Child On Her Back(detail) - Reproduction of a painting by survivor Kazuno Mae

as are their words, written and spoken ---

I printed these texts onto acid-free paper (the same paper I've used in the past for my many boats) and created three new flotillas; the first incorporating text, the second plain black (in response to a survivor's mention of 'black rain') and a third flotilla of very tiny (+/- an inch and 1/3 in length), pure white boats.

I will create a mandala out of the tiniest white boats and 'lay' them as a wreath beside this painting -

Corpses Piled Like Lumber - Reproduction of a painting by survivor, Kiyomi Kono

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

the heart's rising above a familiar chaos of subjects. On the late afternoon wall, paintingsin the making, canvas acrobats hanging on our every word. Bare feet yield to black water.Beyond the frame, life is a risky business. Jack-in-the-box.

Angel. Thief. Some days a blackbird at ease with the rhyme and chime of every unknown thing. Like the signs written in dust after vultures have flown or the bones a shaman rolls, clues clatter and scatter;each piece falls to earth and order, takes its place in the heart's vast chamber.

CB 2012

This week's Tuesday Poem editor is Eileen Moeller. She has chosen Jane Springer's What We Call Frog Hunting.

"This is the last 2 a.m. song fit for poling a johnboat through the swam